Castro Absent as Communist Leaders Arrive in Moscow
Leaders from the Communist world arrived in Moscow on Sunday for a weeklong celebration marking the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, with Cuban leader Fidel Castro notably absent.
Soviet television showed Cuban Vice President Carlos Rodriguez arriving at the head of his country’s delegation.
The official Tass news agency, which said that Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega met Castro in Havana while en route to Moscow, reported the arrival of other East Bloc dignitaries but gave no explanation for the Cuban leader’s absence.
Television showed the leaders of Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia being greeted on arrival by top Kremlin officials. The leader of the seventh member of the Warsaw Pact, Janos Kadar of Hungary, arrived last week.
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